That’s the strategy adopted by Rep. Nick Marshall, a Missouri Republican from Parkville, who on Thursday filed House Resolution 380 in an attempt to bring forth impeachment proceedings against Gov. Jay Nixon.

Marshall, who has won two elections to the Missouri House thanks to a combined 20,600 votes, believes Nixon, who was re-elected governor in 2012 with the support of nearly 1.5 million Missourians, is “guilty of willful neglect of duty and misconduct in office.”

Last November, Nixon issued an executive order telling the Mo. Department of Revenue to accept joint state tax returns from same-sex couples if those couples file joint federal returns. The move was made after the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the IRS ruled same-sex couples could file joint federal returns.

Marshall believes Nixon’s order violates the 2004 voter-approved amendment to the Missouri Constitution that defines marriage as being between a man and a woman.

While we understand there are deeply-rooted feelings on all sides of these issues, this is hardly a reasonable method to utilize in this kind of disagreement. Rep. T.J. Berry, a Republican from Kearney who is a co-sponsor, even admitted to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the resolution wouldn’t go anywhere, but that “when you call someone out on the carpet, they take you more seriously.”

We’d argue that using something as serious as impeachment purely for political purposes instead places you on the opposite end of the spectrum from “serious.”